


you pressed a button and turned me off

by anniedison



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, F/M, M/M, also chuck hansen is rule 63-ed to charlene hansen, and time is wibbly wobbly so be warned, but yes charlene hansen is the best thing ever, ships will be added as they show up and not before, there is a weird overuse of italics and some historical allusions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1260103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniedison/pseuds/anniedison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hermann Gottlieb?” inquired the man who Hermann would later know as Newton Geiszler, somewhat of a screw-up and genius extraordinaire. “I mean, of course it’s you.” He ran a hand through his already-mussed dark hair and laughed nervously, gaze wavering between Hermann’s face and the broken pieces of door strewn about. “Oh, yeah, sorry about the door. It’s just…god, you look happier. Than you were…will be…were. Comparatively.”</p><p>Or: Everyone who works at the Time Regulation Agency is running from something. It's the only way you can bear to go back and forth through timelines and vice versa for something as meaningless as humanity, watch sepia polaroids fade almost instantly, hear bricks and walls of civilizations crumble in silence. This is the story of how Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb find out what they're running from, and resolutely avoid facing it for as long as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the red hot lava monster in my kitchen sink

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to tumblr users ppatroklus, queersammy, and biohazardgirl - the former two for excessive beta-ing and advice and treating my universe as their baby, and the latter for extreme moral support.  
> Anything that follows would be nonexistent without them, because they're perfect angels.

In the five years Hermann Gottlieb has worked at the Time Regulation Agency’s only base, commonly deemed the Shatterdome, he’s managed to meet Newton Geiszler three times, and three times only. It’s especially ironic, given the fact that they work – well, _used_ to work – in the same department (of sorts), but then again, Logistics involves less theoretical science than you’d expect, and it’s mostly a lot of recon and back-and-forth business, so it’s incredibly rare that the two of them end up back at the base at the same time, or the same _time_.

The fact that Agent Geiszler happened to be the one who recruited Hermann to begin with slightly complicated matters. The first time they’d met, Hermann had just turned twenty-two, and things were…decent, for once. He was studying for three degrees at Oxford, had somehow managed to get a girlfriend (god knows what Vanessa was even thinking), and, through some brilliant stroke of luck, he’d avoided speaking to his father for four years.  And in the midst of this pleasant-ish thing known as life, it was an oddly sunshiny yet frigid December afternoon when the door of his flat was kicked in by somebody who didn’t look remotely capable of kicking in anything, let alone a door.

“Hermann Gottlieb?” inquired the man who Hermann would later know as Newton Geiszler, somewhat of a screw-up and genius extraordinaire. “I mean, of _course_ it’s you.” He ran a hand through his already-mussed dark hair and laughed nervously, gaze wavering between Hermann’s face and the broken pieces of door strewn about. “Oh, yeah, sorry about the door. It’s just…god, you look _happier_. Than you were…will be… _were_. Comparatively.”

“I _am_ happier,” blurted Hermann because it was _true_ , before registering the incongruous ‘will be’.  The other man started laughing, _genuinely_ this time. It was horrifically squeaky and probably contagious when being used in front of people who were not Hermann Gottlieb.

“Well,” the man finally managed, “happiness is relative, and like _hella_ temporal.”

“So I’m happier now…compared to _when_ , Mr…erm…wait? Have we met?”

“Nope!”

“Oh.”

“Mmhm…and by the way, you’re coming with me.”

Hermann gaped; the fact that his flat no longer had a door had just properly registered in his brain. “Is this a – a botched kidnapping?” he asked, unfortunately conscious of the fact that you probably shouldn’t accuse a kidnapper of botching a kidnapping when he was potentially in the middle of _not_ botching the kidnapping of _you_. He gauged the distance to the window and the much greater distance from the window to the ground before gulping miserably.

“Kidnapping…well, kinda. Not really. Your life is not _currently_ in any danger, I promise. And I rarely lie. I, like, can’t do a poker face _at_ _all_ – never could, even if my life depended on it, so if I ever ask you to play cards with me _ever_ , don’t you dare let me. I’m Newt, by the way. Newton Geiszler.”

“I’m Hermann – “

“Yeah, I _know_.”

Hermann turned very red. “I suppose that’s true.” His tone was as dignified as he could manage under the circumstances, except he was _still_ blushing. It kind of ruined the effect.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Newt kindly asked, ushering Hermann to one of his own straight-backed chairs while pulling a face. “The furniture totally suits you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Minimalist, in the _bad_ way.”

Hermann quickly rethought his situation. A high-speed escape out the window was probably not an option any more. There was a seventy-six-point-two percent chance he couldn’t have made it _before_ , and that number was rising dramatically.

“Your hair looks nice like this,” Newt said conversationally. “Don’t cut it. Well, nothing I say can stop you from cutting it, but I hope you really regret it in the future when – I mean _if_ – you do cut it.”

“Oh. I guess…thank you? Ness likes it this way – “ he stammered in response.

“Ness, Shmess. Let’s cut to the chase. First things first, I’m here to hire you. Full-time.” Newt grinned suddenly, a quick flash of teeth that would’ve seemed predatory if he didn’t have _dimples_.

“Any company that has _you_ in it would not have a position I might be _remotely_ interested in,” Hermann shot back.

“Dude, ending a sentence on a preposition? _So_ not your thing. And it’s not a _company_.”

“Fantastic,” Hermann muttered in a tone that made it obvious that the only thing he would find less _fantastic_ than the fact that it wasn’t a company would be a giant sea monster attacking London via the Thames.

“You’re really sexy when you’re sarcastic; you should try it more often,” Newt deadpanned.

Hermann hated Newt’s guts and his hair falling into his eyes and the way his glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose. But most of all his guts. He breathed deeply, in and out and in and out, and tried to avoid punching this… _thing_. And tried even harder to avoid thinking another 'and,’ because Hermann Gottlieb rarely was one for run-on sentences.

When he was certain that Hermann wasn’t going to punch him, Newt continued. “It’s not a company; it’s more of an…agency. Think James Bond. MI-whatever number that is. Five? Six? Twenty? I have no clue.”

“Me? Secret agent material?” scoffed Hermann.

“No, like, your IQ is off the _charts_ ,” Newt said with utter seriousness, perhaps even a little awestruck. Or jealous. Or some strange combination of the two. “I’ve read up on you. Which is why I - _we_ want you.”

“You still haven’t said _what_ you want me for,” Hermann pointed out icily.

“ _Another_ preposition? Nice going, seriously.”

Hermann pursed his lips and lowered his eyebrows and said nothing, because he was above all this.

“Anyways, you should probably sit down for this.”

“I’m already sitting down.”

“Huh,” Newt mused. “Then _I_ should sit down.” He took a perch on the arm of Hermann’s chair. It was narrow and wooden and looked intensely uncomfortable but he didn’t even wince.

“So, Hermann – I can call you Hermann, right?”

“No, you most certainly cannot – “

“Do I look like I care?” Hermann craned his neck to the side and spared him a short glance; Newt did not look like he cared in the least. “So, Hermann, did you know that time is a very strange concept?”

“Please don’t give _me_ a lecture on relativity.”

“I wasn’t _going_ to give you a lecture on relativity!”

(Lovely - Newton Geiszler was _that_ type of person who used repetition to disguise his lack of wit.)

“Good, because I would’ve kicked your nose in if you tried to give me a lecture on relativity!”

(Apparently Hermann Gottlieb was _that_ type of person too.)

“But _time_ ,” Newt began again through gritted teeth, “ _is a very strange concept_.” He sighed. “I didn’t expect you to be, like, this _irritating_ , man.”

“I, like, didn’t expect you, like, to be, like, this irritating either, like – ” Hermann spat in Newt’s face mockingly, which in retrospect was in awfully bad taste.

But Newt bit his lip not unattractively and quirked an eyebrow, which was _disconcerting,_ to say the least. “That’s more like it, Hermann.”

“More like _what_?”

“It.”

“Oh.”

Newt dimpled at Hermann again. “And by the way, time travel is realistically possible. I’ve done it. I _regulate_ it. Not time travel, time. I regulate time. Yeah, that’s basically it. You can too. You _will_ , I know it. Take the job, come with me, end of story. Yes?”

Hermann stood from his chair, knocking Newt’s knees in the process, before realizing that standing was a ridiculous idea and sitting back down, knocking his knees again.

“Was that too sudden? Do you need proof? I thought _you’d_ be okay with this; I’ve seen your research – “

“You… _out_ ,” muttered Hermann in a very breathy whisper, the kind that Vanessa claimed she found devastatingly sexy, though Hermann assumed she meant sexy in a scenario that _didn’t_ involve a potentially _very_ confused person literally kicking down his door and insisting he had a…a time machine.

“I’ll make you some tea,” Newt said worriedly. He lowered himself from the arm of Hermann’s chair; for a few seconds, the only thing that could be heard was the ticking of the clock, and then Newt started distractingly banging cupboard doors open and shut.

“What part of ‘out’ do you not understand?” Hermann demanded shakily after the tumult temporarily subsided.

“What part of _moderation_ do _you_ not understand?” Newt countered. “There’s like a million different boxes of tea in here! Like you have nothing else in your kitchen, what the actual – “

“Leave my tea the hell alone!”

“I was _trying_ to help you; you’ve just had a _nasty_ shock – “

“Having you break into my house and make me bloody tea _after breaking into my house_ is not going to remedy anything!”

“The tea wasn’t going to be  _bloody_ , but there are knives here; I can see what I can do about the blood thing if you really want, dude,” Newt said seriously.

The fact that Hermann honestly preferred a Newton Geiszler who was expounding on about goddamn time travel to _this_ Newton Geiszler was rather worrisome.

“Tell me about this job thing, then – “ Hermann ventured tentatively, just as Newt obliviously blurted, “Ooh, blood orange tea! That’s pretty weird, huh?” He whisked one nice-looking and one chipped mug out of a cabinet, filled them with water, and turned on his heel to plop them in the microwave – the _microwave_ , honestly!

(Hermann Gottlieb rarely thought in exclamation points, but the microwave was a crime against both tea and humanity.)

Newt started steeping the teabags after a minute of silence demarcated by the microwave timer, this minute likely commemorating the death of Hermann’s sanity. Because Hermann was reasonably (ninety-nine-point-two percent) sure that neither he nor Ness had bought blood orange tea at any point in time. The thought that tea was miraculously appearing in his cupboard was less horrifying than the thought that Newt carried random samples of his own tea in his pocket to spring on unsuspecting bystanders and pass it off as _not_ his own tea. And the fact that it was less horrifying was somehow even more horrifying.

“How d’you take it?” Newt finally asked, sticking his nose into the refrigerator. “Oh wait, milk and no sugar, right? And a little – “

“ – Bit of honey,” Hermann finished in tandem with Newt, very shaky and _very_ confused.

“Good, so that hasn’t..won’t…hasn’t changed!” Newt’s tone was jarringly bright as he plopped ten sugar cubes – fine, Hermann _counted,_ so yes,it was exactly ten – into his own tea mug.

Hermann nearly gagged at the sight; Newt took a sip and _actually_ gagged. Licking his lips musingly, he left his mug on the counter and took Hermann’s with him.

Returning to his perch on the arm of the chair, he distractedly took a sip of Hermann’s tea and nodded appreciatively before coming to himself. “Oh. Um…yeah, sorry. You can drink from the other end. I’m not like sick or anything…at least I don’t think? That wasn’t very reassuring, huh. I’m not sick, Hermann, I promise. No creepy futuristic space diseases.” He fiddled with his glasses and gave a sad little excuse for a giggle. “I mean, if you don’t want the tea anymore, I’ll drink it in a heartbeat. It’s _really_ good. As tea goes, I mean, ‘cause I’m a coffee person…”

“Your caffeine preferences are the least of my worries,” Hermann said haughtily while taking a hesitant and prim sip. The tea wasn’t bad, actually. In fact, it was, to quote the other man, ‘ _really_ good.’ The problem was that someone like Newton Geiszler with the words ‘ego complex’ practically written all over his face (and _actually_ written on his tie along with several other choice phrases in permanent marker or something) did not need to _know_ that he could make really good tea.

But judging by the way Newt eyed the twitch of Hermann’s lip, it was unfortunately obvious that he _knew_.

“Dude, no need to thank me or anything,” he said with a smirk.

“You did break into my flat…”

“You are _so_ hung up over that!”

“And you have a lot of explaining to do, Geiszler. My door, and the ‘future’ rubbish, and my _door_ – ”

“Wow, _now_ you want an explanation?”

“ _Geiszler_ – “ Hermann warned.

“Okay, okay, I guess tea can _actually_ calm you down…I’m really good at this, apparently  – “

“Geiszler!”

“God, you’re hot when you’re angry – and did you know that time is constantly in flux?” Newt abruptly switched tacks. “So like, at this moment, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs could never have hit Earth?”

“That was – “

“Sixty-five million years ago, yeah. And it could be happening _now_! Cool, huh?”

Hermann looked like he was about ready to faint again. “I…I like linear things,” he explained weakly.

“It’s not _not_ linear! It’s just that, well, every point on the line is a completely different dimension, kind of – well, no, but screw where it is on the line, it’s constantly _happening_. The past isn’t over, it’s changing!” His voice rose to an excited squeak. “Is that any better?”

“You think that’s _helping_?”

He groaned. “Hermann, Hermann, _Hermann_. Open your mind, man.”

“Don’t tell _me_ to open my mind – “

“I’m telling you to open your mind _like a man_ , dude – “

“That’s sexist, and don’t ‘dude’ me again or I’ll – “

“Shush, dude. This thing is legit; I’ve met Al Capone, and he was a _dick_.”

“You – ?“

“ _I’ve said too much_ ,” Newt whispered while overdramatically widening his eyes. Hermann scowled.

“Sorry, couldn’t resist. So anyways, our job is to keep the past and the future in sync with what should actually be happening so the world doesn’t explode or whatevs. Our base is out of dimensions in general, which I don’t really get because I hate physics, but we basically exist in no time, which is _really_ cool. Well, not ex- _act_ -ly, it feels no different than when we’re in time. But we’re like in a pocket – “

“Who are you to decide what  _should_  be happening?” cried Hermann, cutting short Newt’s ramble. “By whose standards? How do you even know that all of your ‘agents’ come from the same 'timeline'? Maybe there are multiple _right_ timelines that don't ruin the universe beyond repair! I call  _bullshit_.”

Newt cracked a smile at Hermann’s impassioned shriek of ‘bullshit,’ and patted him on the shoulder. “Whoa, you’ve got morals. Or you like disagreeing with me and you have no morals at all…but at least you’ve managed to believe that this is real now – “

“No, I _haven’t_ – “

“But basically, we act under the assumption that any change to the established timeline is going to eventually make the world…universe, really…blow up. Butterfly effect and all. So there’s only one right timeline, because all of our agents are from a world that…well…hasn’t blown up. You follow?”

“I think so,” Hermann said earnestly, noting with mingled self-pride and terror that he seemed to be taking this whole explanation remarkably well, considering everything.

“So in Logistics – that’s my department, and yours too if you come with me, which you _will_ – we track these changes, and if the universe ends up exploding, we go to each original change and un-change it.”

“Un-change?”

“I _meant_ ‘change it _back’_ ,” Newt huffed. “ _We-ell_ , we don’t do the actual changing. We go in do recon and figure out exactly how other agents can do the changing, and _they_ swoop in, totally badass, and get _all_ the damn credit. It’s ridiculous sometimes. Like, Raleigh – I mean, Agent Becket – had to go a few hundred years into the future once to stop some guy from wearing mismatched socks on his first date, so he and whoever it was he was on a date with could actually hook up – ‘cause when he wore a red sock and a blue sock it did _not_ go over well – and then they’d have some kid who turned out to be important or something. No clue how he even finished the sock thing because he didn’t follow my plan – my plan was shit; I think there was some weird halfhearted seduction crap involved to get into that dude’s house? Raleigh wouldn’t tell me how he did it, or speak to _anyone_ for a week, I swear.” Newt dropped his voice slightly. “If you ask me, I think Raleigh fell in _love_ with what’s-his-face, which kinda makes sense because when I did the snooping around bit, I was _so_ distracted ‘cause what’s-his-face was _freaking attractive_. Not that I blame Raleigh, the kid’s like _nineteen_. Oh, but not that seduction’s something _you’ll_ have to do or anything, ‘cause you’d suck at it, so yep, I hope that didn’t scare you off – “

“That’s a low blow, Geiszler – “

He shrugged with a casual, “So, you in?”

“What’s the…catch? Beyond the seduction thing?”

Newt laughed delightedly. “I thought you’d think the job itself was the catch, you spoilsport. This is a good sign.”

“Shut it,” groaned Hermann, because ‘shut it’ sounded a lot classier than ‘shut _up,’_ which was infantile and belonged in the mouths of children in primary school who pulled each other’s hair and screamed. “The catch?”

“No catch. See, Hermann, the people who take this job are people who run. We’ve all got something we want to leave behind, and I know your something.”

Hermann swallowed; this was getting into dangerously iffy territory, dangerously fast. 

“You, Hermann Gottlieb, think you’re not wanted – and you’re right.”

“My god, Geiszler, I have a _girlfriend_ and I’ve had an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket for a month – “

“It’s too soon, isn’t it? You guys are, like, _really_ young – “

“I love her! And – “

“And you’re afraid she doesn’t love you, or that she’s lying through her teeth because how can anybody love _you_? Forcing her hand with a piece of metal won’t help anything,” said Newt, shaking his head.

Hermann was reasonably sure that Newt had no right to shake his head disapprovingly like that, because childish and immature bastards had no rights at all to speak of.

“And besides, it doesn’t matter,” continued Newt, “because when you join the agency, everyone back here is going to think you _died_.”

Hermann spluttered, “You’re faking my death?”

“Look at that, you’re talking like you’ve already decided you’re taking the position!”

“So you _are_ faking my death?”

“ _We_ don’t have to do anything – people always tend to assume the worst. Glass half-empty and all that shit. _You_ probably see a half-empty glass as _completely_ empty, which just goes to show.”

 “Geiszler…”

“You _can_ call me Newt.”

“I’d rather not, honestly. But…”

“Yes, Hermann, I _was_ at your funeral. Went right before I came here, actually. It’ll be in…two weeks, I think.” Newt fiddled with the clunky-looking device on his wrist, presumably to verify that. “There was no body, obviously, and Vanessa wasn’t there, and your sister…um…Karla, right? She made a _very_ nice speech full of platitudes…and _crap_ , basically. And your dad had a chair in the front and he didn’t cry at all.” Newt glanced quickly at the blood draining from Hermann’s face. “I told you, we’re all running from something, and you’re not good at it yet, but you’ll learn. We cut and run – the cutting’s a science, but the running’s an art, dude. And the _art_ is what you need to practice. You’re going to come with me and cut all ties to _here_ , common knowledge, but I don’t think you can properly leave this all behind just yet and that’s totally okay.”

“This speech sounds rehearsed,” Hermann spat out after a few minutes.

“It was.” Newt gave a wan excuse for a grin.

Hermann hesitantly opened his mouth to say something, and Newt placed a finger over his lips; it was a reasonably average finger, but it was warm and cold and inkstained and perfect and horrible all at the same time. “Yeah, _duh_ Hermann, it’s against protocol for you to leave Ness a note to ‘explain’ things, and yeah, of course I’m going to let you break protocol. I don’t believe in _protocol_. She wasn’t at your funeral; she probably knows you’re not… _dead_ dead. And I’ve got one pen with a few drops of ink left in it, and I might as well kill the pen for you, man. Okay?”

“Thank you, Geiszler,” he said softly.

“Don’t mention it. Like, _don’t_. I could totally get fired for this.”

“Good.” Hermann smiled for the first time since his door got kicked in, a small smile that still managed to light up his face and spread to his eyes, and vindictively plucked the pen from Newt’s shirt pocket. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and feedback are much appreciated! And say hi on tumblr; I'm at patrachilles~
> 
> Chapter 2 should be a pretty quick update; the rest might be a /bit/ slower, but not too much. The angst'll start in 3, so be warned. :P


	2. i looked through your eyes, and all i saw were lens flares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another thank you to my betareaders, aka the Vanessa fanclub, who you can find at the tumblr urls ppatroklos and queersammy~
> 
> Also, just a small unpleasant reminder that Hermann is 22 years old and an /actual baby/. Think Owen Harper from Torchwood, hair and all. 
> 
> Is that all going to go to shit soon? Well...

Hermann didn’t actually end up seeing the mysterious, elusive, and decidedly _not_ cute Newton Geiszler again until two years after that day, give or take.

After Hermann scribbled a cryptic but hopefully sentimental letter to Vanessa, Newt grabbed his arm and pressed a few buttons on his strange wrist device. Immediately, the two of them had _vanished_ – properly vanished – from Hermann’s flat and reappeared in front of a metal door, the nameplate proclaiming that it led to the office of one _Stacker Pentecost_.

After steering a still-disoriented Hermann (by the _elbow_!) through the door, and exchanging a brief nod and a fist bump with the bowtie-wearing, clipboard-wielding person in the corner (who Hermann assumed was some sort of glorified assistant), Newt strode out the room without looking back.

“Hermann Gottlieb?” asked the glorified assistant, once the door banged shut.

“Hermann Gottlieb,” stated the imposing figure of Stacker Pentecost in a deep and rather irritated voice. It was not a question this time – not like it needed to be a question the first time either. Because Hermann’s own name was now the only thing he was sure he knew.

With the frightful realization that there were too many variables in this whole scenario, Hermann grew conscious of a vague desire to salute and then faint. Freudian psychology – pseudopsychology, really  – would have claimed that the former urge had to do with the fact that people in authority with British accents reminded him consistently of his father. Not that Hermann thought those were the right words to put into Freud’s mouth, because –

Oh. Oh, god. _Hermann could actually ask Freud himself._

Hermann felt much more than vaguely faint as the impossibly unreal reality of his whole situation began to sink in. The pictures on the walls, (some stationary but most _moving_ , largely of a small girl with dark hair beaming at a camera), shimmered and blended into a haze of black and blue; this in turn caused the room itself to blur into something unpleasantly like a giant bruise.

He blinked rapidly to clear his head, which alleviated the situation only marginally.

“Is…is there a…a glass of water here?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” groaned the assistant, oozing with condescension. He flicked a nonexistent stray hair out of his face before continuing, a maliciously supercilious gleam in his eyes. “Why would we have _water_? _So_ twenty-first century. Water goes obsoleteby the time your ex-contemporaries turn ninety, Mr. Gottlieb. Here in the Shatterdome, we thrive on a thirty-third century inhalable substitute –  “

Hermann’s eyes darted wildly around the room in pursuit of a chair to no avail for a few moments, after which he decided in a split-second haze that it would be a fantastically good idea to sit on the floor.

“Oh my _god_ ,” the man repeated again with a delighted glee rather than the previous snobbery, this time, in fact, laughing out loud. “That was _actually_ worth it. Sure, I’ll find you some water. You look like you’re going to literally _melt_ ; it’s priceless. If only you could see your face – _which you would be able to do if we paneled this wall with mirrors like I’ve been telling him to do for millennia_ – “ He said this last with a pointed glare at his boss.

Hermann, for his part, was unsure how anybody could have the horrific levels of audacity needed to even gaze upon Pentecost with an emotion besides reverence. Actually, there was probably one other person – it now made sense why Newt Geiszler and this assistant-type-person were on fist-bumping terms.

“Get the man his water, Tendo Choi,” Pentecost grumbled in response. “And a chair.” If Hermann didn’t know better, he would have perhaps made the assumption that the solemn man was biting back a rare and uncharacteristic smile.

“It’s fine, I – “ managed Hermann, still sprawled on the floor in a woefully undignified fashion.

Tendo made no effort to leave the room at all, giggling in a very Geiszler-esque manner. “ _Water_ obsolete? Honestly…” he eventually forced out, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. “You’re more gullible than _Raleigh_ , and Newt got him to believe that I was the kid’s future great-grandson with Angelina Jolie.”

(From the two pieces of information Hermann had heard about Raleigh Becket thus far, who was also the only actual agent besides Newt he’d heard of at all, Hermann was unsure whether he was a human or a happily hyperactive puppy. Maybe the Shatterdome was a high-tech sort of animal shelter and Newt was a – to put it mildly – a big fat liar.)

“The _water_ , Choi. If he faints, I am not dragging him out. _You_ are.”

“Oh yeah, the water, of course.” Tendo broke into renewed laughter at the undisguised terror in Hermann’s expression, still decidedly _not_ moving from his position at the corner of the office. “Look, do you want to just go get some water yourself, Hermann? There’s a faucet in your room, but that’ll be two or three floors up – the nearest water cooler’s in Rec Room A, I think, so – “

Pentecost gave an exaggerated sigh and buried his head in his hands. “Fine. Fine! Both of you – _out_. Choi, _you_ give Gottlieb the tour and the fear-inducing lecture _and_ the technological background to both the computer systems _and_ portable – “

Hermann felt a cold prickle of guilt at Pentecost’s raised voice, though technically, he’d done nothing wrong – sitting on the floor was awkward, granted, but not _wrong_.

The concept of ‘guilt,’ by contrast, did not seem to be in Tendo’s vocabulary. “Oh, come _on_. There’s the weekly poker game in Rec Room F and the Beckets are betting big this time. If you make me miss that, you’re just cruel – “

“ _Out_!”

Hermann shakily pushed himself upright and out the door, not a mean feat given that his legs felt like they were flickering into and out of this dimension. Tendo followed suit, turning back with a cry of, “Have you ever even _played_ poker? You don’t _understand_!”

Out the door, however, was a whole new world. And that was just the _hallway_.

It wasn’t a bustling hallway; in fact, it was completely empty except for the two of them. And that made sense, considering that giving Pentecost a very, _very_ wide berth was ostensibly the only viable option when it came to self-preservation. Despite this, however, its width and high ceilings indicated that it was built to host more than the two of them – maybe a large symphony orchestra. Or a Gatsby party.

There were flashing buttons on the walls and a methodical thumping sound coming from deep in the bowels of the building. Yet if you ignored _that_ , it looked kind of like one of those warehouse stores where you can only buy things in bulk – equally grey and intimidating, though hopefully less dusty. Not that Hermann was particularly finicky or anything.

Okay, fine, he _was_ finicky, but more importantly, he also had a really embarrassingly high-pitched sneeze around dust, the kind of sneeze that could easily be used as blackmail fodder. And this was not a hypothetical scenario. He did his brothers’ math homework for a year because they threatened to videotape that sneeze and send it to their cute neighbor. Ness wheedled him into buying a bloody _cat_ for that sneeze.

The cat was even less fond of him than the average human being was and made him sneeze even more.

Hermann and Bastien (don’t judge; normal people probably named snobbish feline bastards after their snobbish non-feline brothers too) had a relationship of mutual loathing, and it wasn’t like Hermann missed the damn thing right now.

Definitely not.

“He hasn’t ever played poker,” muttered Tendo incredulously under his breath. “Ever!”

Hermann mentally kicked himself and abandoned his reverie, nodding absently.

“Please tell me _you’ve_ played poker.”

“Huh?”

“Shit, you look so…out of it. Not like I blame you, but – “

“No, don’t worry…um…Mr. Choi, I – “

“Tendo. It’s Tendo.”

“I was just thinking about…my girlfriend’s – _my_ – cat, Mr. Choi.” The hallway, so far removed from the stark minimalism of his old flat, seemed pixelated, part of some virtual universe all in Hermann’s own head. And the blinking lights, now that they’d lost their novelty, were so far from natural that ‘migraine-inducing’ was an understatement. Hermann didn’t even need the water anymore; he was just… _desensitized_.

“You, a cat person? No _way_ ,” snorted Tendo. He cocked his head to the side thoughtfully. “But then again, cat people are intellectuals. And _patient_. And recognize that other people, although very diligent employees and kind souls, _do_ have poker games to attend, and  – “

He was cut off by Hermann’s phone ringing.

“Shit! Oh my god, I am genuinely sorry – “ spluttered Hermann, feeling uncomfortably like he’d just interrupted a deathly silent lecture or a business meeting or a midterm in particle physics.

Actually, no, that made no sense; this situation was as far from formal as possible. _Something_ was off, though.

Maybe it was the fact that if they were in no dimension, he shouldn’t be receiving any calls at all. Hermann was about ninety percent sure of this, and when he was about ninety percent sure of something, he was one hundred percent sure that the something was right because it was common knowledge that he had a tendency to overcalculate uncertainty.  In which case, his phone, rather than he himself, should be very disappointed in itself and not sounding so tinny and awfully chipper.

(Only _he_ would let his phone’s nonexistent guilt transfer onto his own conscience, Hermann thought with a flash of mingled rage and pity, possessed by the desire to throw first his phone and then himself against the wall.)

“Whatever, it’s fine,” shrugged Tendo, as if this was a regular occurrence.

“How is this even – “

“Working? Time in the base has the illusion of being linear. Sometimes it goes _weird_ on us, but for the most part, things happen in order. I mean, we don’t _visibly_ age when we’re here even though we pretend we’re aging for the sake of common sense – which is why everyone has incredibly long life spans – not like you’re invincible or anything because you spend most of your time off-base anyway. But beyond that, you can barely tell we’re out of dimensions. Long story short, your phone thinks you haven’t left home.”

“Do I answer it…?” asked Hermann awkwardly. “I mean, it’s probably my girlfriend, and she’s going to be _so_ mad…”

Tendo shrieked, “Are you kidding me? Hermann, she thinks you’re dead! Denial is the first stage of grief, right? You’ll get like twenty calls all in a row, and you should just let them all go to voicemail. And then you can listen to the voicemails and try not to cry – “

“Oh, well…yes, she does…she definitely does think I…um…died,” stammered Hermann.

 _Oh, god, what_ did _Vanessa even think?_

“You know what?” he asked rhetorically, voice slightly stronger. “I think I should go back. This was a mistake. I have a life, an education, Ness, a _cat_ – and I gave it all up just because a reasonably attractive human being told me – I mean, not _attractive_ , no – but this can’t be real, Mr. Choi. Nothing in this place makes any sense, and I don’t like it, because there is literally nothing scientific that I can’t understand, but – “

“Oh my – you – you think _Newt’s_ pretty?” gaped Tendo incredulously, as if that was the only thing that registered for him. “Newt. _Pretty_.”

“But I never said…um…“

“Hermann freaking Gottlieb, you think you’re fifty but you’re really twenty-two; this is _normal_. Why am _I_ giving _you_ this lecture – “

The cell phone rang again. Hermann glared at it like the act of glaring was going out of style. It probably was going out of style, at some future point in time, which also happened to be…happening. Right now. Because time _was not linear_. Apparently. He was once again struck by the fact that this situation was absolutely ridiculous; the fact that his head seemed clear regardless gave him the inexplicable compulsion to laugh.

“Oh, and yeah, too bad about your resignation, because I can’t actually let you do that,” said Tendo after a pause. “It’s a bit late now to back out. Impossible, actually, if you want me to be completely honest. Not like I’m surprised you asked. Everyone wants out at first, so you’re not a special snowflake.”

“I never said I’m a – a snowflake!”

“I know; I just like calling people _special snowflakes_. Rolls off the tongue, hm? It’s the alliteration, I think. Absolutely addictive.” He grinned for an instant before sobering slightly. “You should check voicemail now.”

It was indeed Vanessa who had called before, and there were three messages waiting, despite Hermann having only heard the phone ring twice. He opened his mouth to ask Tendo for an explanation, then closed it with a shuddering sigh of an exhale.

“Ooh!” broke in Tendo, looking over Hermann’s shoulder onto the phone’s home screen image of Vanessa and Bastien – the cat, not the human. (If Vanessa had ever met the human Bastien, or seen Hermann’s behavior around the human Bastien, the only thing that could possibly ensue was a breakup. With unprecedentedly bad fallout.) “Is that her? She’s _cute_ – no wonder you’re so upset – “

“Do you mind?” cried Hermann, turning in a sharp accidental pirouette that may have made an actual dancer envious.

“Tell me about her.”

“I thought you were abandoning me for a poker game?”

“Poker can wait,” Tendo said gravely, before shaking his head. “Okay, sorry, I felt like I _had_ to say that, but the game really can’t wait. I’ll take you up to the residential floor in the side elevator because I don’t think you’re up to actually meeting anyone besides me, but then I’ll have to dash. You can get the tour later, yeah?”

“I suppose…”

“Thank _god_. You’re brilliant, I hope you know that, Hermann. Except I have no idea which room you’re going to be assigned to and I don’t have the key card for it either, so I’ll just stash you in…mine? No, sorry, it’s a mess. You can’t see that. Um…Newt’s is worse. And he’s probably not coming back for a few weeks and I’m going to feel shitty using his key without asking, so that’s a no go too.”

Hermann felt a vague twinge of disappointment. “It’s not like I’m a neat freak or anything; I don’t mind – “

“You’re kidding me,” scoffed Tendo, and Hermann immediately dropped the subject.

Tendo fiddled around in his pockets, which seemed to hold more than the average pocket should hold (or ever be allowed to hold for the sake of the well-being of the aforementioned pockets), clearly searching for something. “Oh, _wait_. I’ve got Yancy’s – no, Raleigh’s – no, actually, it _is_ Yancy’s card – I think. So I’ll dump you in the Beckets’ room.”

“Thank you?” asked Hermann, because he felt he had to say _something_ , even if not wholeheartedly, because Tendo Choi did not deserve an unequivocal expression of gratitude by any standard.

“You _should_ be thanking me. _Nothing_ in their room is regulation. Huge beds, impossibly high thread count, the works. Hell, their television screen nearly covers the wall.”

“And they won’t be upset about me commandeering it?”

“I’ll tell them about you before, during, or after the poker game. Before, during, or after I kick their combined asses.”

 “I recommend _before_ ,” muttered Hermann, stopping short in front of the elevator. “In case you win so spectacularly that they’ll never want to look you in the eyes again.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“Of course not,” said Hermann with a calculated quirk of his right eyebrow.

The elevator which the two of them stepped into was unexpectedly mundane. It wasn’t as if Hermann was hoping for a futuristic teleportation beam or anything, but the elevator was nothing more than an elevator. Very industrial, very creaky, seemed prone to getting stuck halfway between floors.

“Oh, huh,” mused Tendo as the doors shut. “We were talking about your now ex-girlfriend, weren’t we?”

“No.”

“Well, _I_ was.”

“Please do not continue. Quite possibly _ever_.”

Tendo groaned, “Stop that, Hermann. Just – stop. We’ve _all_ left people behind, and we’re all going to leave more people behind, and so I know for a fact that your coping mechanisms are a literal nightmare. So stop whining and tell me about her.”

Hermann ignored him, hunched over his phone to play the first message, and put the cell to his ear with a warning glance at Tendo that spoke volumes. Multiple volumes filled with the repeated sentence ‘eavesdrop and I will actually find a working guillotine and use it on you.’

_Hermann? Hermann, baby?_

Vanessa’s voice sounded like something from a tragedy, terrified even in its disembodied state – and for some reason the terror was contagious, and Hermann himself was filled with dread, dread for something he couldn’t place – and before he knew it he found words spilling out to fill the gaps between her sobbing breaths and silence.

“Ness was – is beautiful,” he murmured, refusing to make eye contact even though he knew Tendo was listening. “Absolutely beautiful. God knows what she saw in me, but – I guess it’s that – maybe – we meshed, almost on an atomic level. Positive and negative, perhaps, or some kind of unconscious attraction, because it’s not as if anybody could be consciously attracted to me – “

Tendo gave Hermann’s face a proper once-over, eyes lingering over the dark eyes and cheekbones, and shook his head vehemently at the declaration while obviously resisting the urge to audibly interrupt.

“When we held hands, and we held hands all the time, hers was coffee – or chai tea – all luminescent and gorgeous, and mine looked awful, like skim milk or something, not even normal milk, because everyone – _everyone_ – was grey compared to Ness – my metaphors are the worst, but you know – ”

_Baby? Why the hell are you taking a job with MI5? You don’t even like their methods, you don’t – what do you mean you’ll never see me again? Who said secret service employees can’t have a family, a future, a life?_

“Nobody but Ness ever called me ‘baby,’ you know. I hated it, and I never told her that, but at the same time – come to think of it, I probably wasn’t even called ‘baby’ when I was actually a baby, so – “

_You can’t just tell me you were going to propose to me and then leave! I’d have said yes, Hermann, you know I would have, I always would have – please, please please please just come back for us. For this. For something._

“I never laughed during sex before I met her. Never laughed even in the middle of a kiss. Doubt I will again.”

_Hermann baby, you left your tea on the coffee table, and I know I should do something about that, but I can’t touch the cup because it’s the last thing you touched and it’s still warm – god – you made our flat feel like a crime scene. Sweetheart, if you wanted to leave, why didn’t you tell me? Is this really MI5? Am I going to get a ransom demand? What happened to the door? Why do I even care about the bloody door, baby? But I don’t know, I’m sitting in a doorless flat and crying and this is pathetic but – please don’t leave._

“You know how everybody thinks sociology majors are cop-outs? She wasn’t ever – Ness was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and she just – it was a vocation for her – shit, why am I in the past tense? Oh my god, I’m in the past tense!” Hermann blurted out, voice echoing in the cramped elevator.

_You said everyone thinks you’re dead, but how do I know you’re not? And even if you’re not, what do I tell them? How do I live like this?_

There were fifteen seconds left in the message, but Hermann lowered the phone from his ear and switched it off preemptively.

“I can’t do this,” Hermann realized as the lift doors opened and he stepped out on to the fifth floor, drifting after Tendo in a kind of dream state. “I actually cannot do this job.”

Yet Tendo had the audacity to laugh in his face. “We’ve been through this already. And you know, you’ve made this so much easier for us just by having these questions _after_ you’ve been recruited. I never thought Newt was a master of persuasion, but _damn_.”

“He was just – “ Hermann floundered, “ – just so utterly sure that I would join, that I felt it was my _destiny_ or some rubbish like that, but who determines destiny anyway? If this is all completely arbitrary, who says you can’t recruit Vanessa too?”

“I was wondering when you’d get there,” Tendo commented pleasantly, tone masking a sad sympathetic smile that made Hermann brace himself for a death sentence. “But you were right when you called this your destiny. Remember how I said that the base was under a linear illusion?”

“Yes,” grumbled Hermann, wishing devoutly that the answer was no.

“Except sometimes the illusion messes up. We get files from the future with names nobody recognizes, and sometimes I walk down the hallways and end up somewhere – well, some _when_ – else completely, with people I’ve never seen before and sometimes those people end up here and don’t know when they are – I mean, if that happens, you just keep walking and don’t talk to anyone and things should straighten out.”

Hermann glanced around the surrounding walls with alarm.

“Hey, calm down, it’s not all that freaky once you think about it a bit. Agent Hansen – the younger one – you’ll meet her eventually – she’s been here the longest and she’s seen _herself_ a few times.”

“…Point being, Mr. Choi?”

“Point being, _you’re_ in the system. We all know for a fact that you’re going to work here, so yeah, it _is_ your destiny. And on the other hand, there’s no record of a Vanessa anywhere, Gottlieb or otherwise, so that’s not happening any time soon. Or any time _ever_.”

They stopped in front of an unmarked door, which Tendo unlocked with one smooth motion of the key card. He pushed Hermann in, waved almost flirtatiously with his fingers rather than his hand, and slammed the door shut again in a rush, leaving Hermann to deal with that new information on his own.

Hermann sunk down on one of the two beds and the room, and – damn – Tendo hadn’t been lying about the thread count thing. He counted to ten, sneaking furtive peeks at the door all the while, and then counted to twenty just to be safe. Assured that his jailor wasn’t coming back at any point in the near future, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and began to methodically tap out a text message.

 _Dearest Vanessa_ , _I_ –

He erased it.

_Ness, darling, you –_

There came a sudden scrabbling at the door; Hermann froze in panic, fingers hovering motionlessly over the keypad. There was a small cabinet to his left – which was better than Hermann could have hoped for – so he dashed over, opened what looked to be one of the Beckets’ underwear drawers (oh, god, he could’ve gone a lifetime without seeing _that_ ), tossed the phone in, and managed to get back onto the bed to twiddle his thumbs absently by the time Tendo actually walked in again.

“You okay?” he asked worriedly. “It’s like you’re more stressed than when I left you, and that was like a minute ago.”

“Fine,” Hermann forcing a laugh while he tried to remember how to breathe without shaking. “ _Absolutely_ fine. Besides, it was more like two minutes and thirty seconds, and a lot can happen in a person’s head in two minutes and thirty seconds.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Why are you here, anyway? Are you worried that I’m doing something…wrong? I haven’t moved from here. Not at all.”

“Hell, no! _Wait_ , you’re asking because…?”

“No reason,” blurted Hermann too quickly. “Does unreasonable paranoia suffice?”

“Mm, yeah, seeing as this is _you_ ,” shrugged Tendo. “Go figure. Anyways, halfway down the stairs, I realized that Pentecost might quiz you to prove I gave you the tour, so I thought I’d just give you the virtual one. Okay?” He held up a key ring of devices that appeared to be flash drives, except they were about a sixteenth of the size of a normal flash drive. “Oh, and are you fluent in anything besides English? ‘Cause Pentecost got Newt to direct the English FAQ, and he thought he was all cool and artsy and ‘twenty-first century _hipster’_ – “

“Typical.”

“I know, right? This was like two years ago your time, and he hasn’t changed _at all_. Yeah, so he went haywire with the handheld camera thing, and sometimes he switches it to black and white – it’s _so_ unprofessional – and after he finished, Pentecost fired his ass off the whole project. The Kaidanovskys took over, and so everything _else_ is at least _coherent_ – “

“I knew German when I was young, but after my family moved to England, I forgot _everything_ ,” lied Hermann. “I’d have forced myself to keep it up if it meant I could avoid seeing anything even touched by Geiszler.”

Hermann’s cheeks were most definitely not on fire because Hermann Gottlieb was the personification of ice. Icy, impassive, and not in the least carnally attracted to a certain recon agent with a talent for mayhem.

Biting his lip and wrinkling his nose with either distaste or confusion, Tendo sighed, “Great. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He pushed the _thing_ – the great-grandchild of the average flash drive, or what have you – into a slit in the large screen opposite the bed, and backed out of the room.

“ _Welcome to the Time Regulation Agency!”_ boomed a staticky voice coming from nowhere in particular.

Hermann gave a strangled cry of shock; Tendo, who was halfway to the door, ran towards the television and pressed a few buttons in what looked like no particular order.

“ _Shit_ , Hermann, I am _so_ sorry, I have _no_ idea what was up with their presets. Legitimately no idea, because nobody in their right mind would watch anything that loud, not even porn –  but Raleigh’s kind of…um… _odd_ that way, but still –  “

“You should probably go,” said Hermann earnestly.

“I should _really_ go,” Tendo practically shouted, fleeing the room, his last few words masked by the volume of his footfalls.

“I’m Agent Becket, Yancy Becket,” the same voice from earlier intoned, this time softer. Warmer. With a vaguely sardonic inflection that was… _nice_. “Age twenty-one, standard time. Eighty-six, no, _seven_ , successful missions since recruitment.”

The image on the screen flickered into sharp definition, and revealed a figure in sharp definition sitting on a chair, who admittedly looked just as nice as he sounded.

“Dude, sound happier to be here!” hissed a voice from offscreen, probably coming from behind the camera.  Its squeaky inflection was unmistakably Newt’s.

 _Okay_. This was _brilliant_. Absolutely brilliant. Hermann had never, ever, had an infatuation – a _crush_ (ew) – on anyone in his life. This was a given.

The fact that at this present moment, he apparently had _two_ , while still in love (actual proper grown-up _love_ ) with someone else, was also now a given.

“I’m _not_ happy to be here!” Yancy Becket stage-whispered onscreen. “It’s my off day!” He crossed one leg over the other defensively, and folded his arms across his chest, both of which actions made him look more aesthetically pleasing than was seemly.

Hermann mused that this was the kind of attraction you probably felt when you realized that people with the bodies of department store mannequins and the faces of magazine covers were actually human too.

“I have spent, like, so many off days babysitting your brother, _who by the way is supposed to be here right now_ , so shut your mouth – “ muttered Newt, not even bothering to lower his voice any further. The subsequent eye roll was not visible but obvious nevertheless.

“The camera’s rolling, losers!” groaned an irritated-looking girl with an Australian accent. She was sitting in the chair next to Yancy, but on reflection, she wasn’t just sitting in the chair, she was _owning_ the chair. Her legs were spread in a blatantly belligerent fashion which Hermann recognized from his sister’s not-so-rebellious teenage years. “Agent Charlene Hansen, age sixteen, standard time. I’ve lived in the Shatterdome for…sixteen years, what a coincidence! Eighty- _eight_ missions completed successfully, so suck on that, Becket.” She shook her hair out of her face and winked.

“Charlene, you’ve completed three missions. Maybe less, I haven’t been counting. With your _dad_. You’ve been legitly _working_ here for less than four months.”

“Shut up, Yancy, _they_ don’t need to know that!” She gestured broadly in the general direction of Newt’s camera and scowled. She looked younger than her years for that instant – slightly panicked, almost naïve in her insecurity.

“Oh, and here comes the conquering hero,” Newt laughed, zooming out to focus on a red-cheeked young man who was audibly short of breath, leaning on the back of Yancy’s chair.

In the next instant, he turned _grey_ -cheeked. As a matter of fact, _everything_ turned grey. Hermann supposed this was what Tendo meant when he was talking about Newt switching to black and white without apparent reason.

“Sorry, Mako was…um…yeah, and – “

“Camera’s on,” Charlene said with a fond smirk and a warning dig in the ribs.

“Oh, dammit, what are we starting with? Latin? Mandarin? Swahili? Klingon?”

“English,” whispered Yancy loudly. He pulled a face while looking straight ahead with exasperation.

“Oh, sorry – “

“Did you forget that Klingon’s not real – “

“Shut up, Hansen! Klingon’s just as legitimate as English – “ came a broken squeak; the camera shook indignantly.

“Yeah, you’re totally going to have the time of your life here,” shrieked Charlene Hansen above the tumult. “Just look at us!”

“No matter if you’re working, visiting, or a temporary prisoner, the Shatterdome is where dreams come true!” cried Yancy louder.

“And _now_ you go on-script, Becket? Honestly – “ yelled Newt, before the screen went black.

By the time Hermann recovered from the ensuing bout of secondhand embarrassment, a particularly nasty case, considering everything, the Beckets and Charlene had been replaced onscreen by a composed-looking (and slightly familiar?) girl with two rebellious blue streaks in her dark hair. Oddly enough, the streaks were so methodically dyed and _orderly_ that she looked as far from rebellious as humanly possible.

At an unintelligibly hissed word from Newt, she smiled at the camera more with her eyes than with her mouth, and after that Hermann was able to place her swiftly as the subject of the ten million and three pictures in Pentecost’s office, albeit a tad older.

“Welcome to the Shatterdome; I’m Mako Mori, here to walk you around in circles,” she began with a pleasant lilt to her voice.

“ _Agent_ Mako Mori,” said Newt, with the air of one who had said that phrase infinitely many times before. “Don’t throw yourself under the bus! You’re _badass_ and you need to take charge of that shit – “

“I’m _honorary_ agent Mori,” corrected Mako with a frigid glare. “Sixteen years old standard time, zero missions completed. Because my father won’t let me leave without supervision – “

“And this is the clock!” cut in Raleigh, popping into the frame out of nowhere to squeeze the girl’s  shoulder comfortingly. “The _clock_ , Mako.”

The camera panned up to a large digital clock on the wall, with numbers that made no sense whatsoever. “Yes, the time displayed is arbitrary, since it was set to zero when the Shatterdome was created, but it helps you keep track of how long you’ve been gone – that is, whenever you manage to leave, which I _don’t_ – “

“Mako, calm down, think of Charlene making out with you or something – “ squeaked Newt.

Her eyes grew wide; she stepped away from Raleigh towards the camera, slowly and deliberately pulling her lower lip between her teeth. Anger caused her words to come out stilted, and it was positively terrifying. “Who said I had to calm down! I am always calm, and now I don’t _want_ to be calm, and – “

There came a muffled, “Ow, don’t hit me, dude! – was that a pressure point – oh my god – ” and the screen went black again.

The next two hours and fifteen-ish minutes involved a whirlwind tour through the Shatterdome’s facilities. Hermann actually fell _asleep_ between Rec Room G and Rec Room Z5 (did these people do actual _work_ at all?), but he was reasonably certain he didn’t miss much.

In fact, the only things he registered throughout the whole thing were the fact that Newt’s room had a bed large enough for twenty people, Yancy Becket was probably dating the cheerful-looking humanoid in the Forgery Department (they created counterfeit money and fake identifications used during missions), and Raleigh probably had a thing for everyone in the whole building simultaneously.

Actually, if that was _really_ all he registered, Hermann might feel less like finding Geiszler and punching him in the face for _not warning him about half this shit._

For one thing, why did Charlene spend five minutes on-camera talking to someone she called Mels, someone who looked uncannily like _Amelia Earhart?_

Why did Newt sound so excited when he pointed out a large gaggle of people in the main hall? “You guys all know that one World War Four battalion that got…lost, right? Breaking news, all over the headlines for _years_? Well, they’re not lost! They actually work here!”

The explanation Hermann really wanted involved _World War Four_ – four! – but that, predictably, was never given to him.

Oh, and most importantly, how the hell were you supposed to actually travel in time? Newt mumbled something about, “Yeah, you put in basic latitude and longitude coordinates in your wrist device and the specifics are denoted by someone at the computer system – but that’s boring and computers are _intuitive_ – I mean, look!” He swerved the camera towards a screen with no keyboard, no mouse, no _anything_ , which meant that it looked nothing like a computer at all.

If _that_ was intuitive, Hermann wondered if Newt came out of the womb tying his shoelaces in a perfect bow.

After the final Rec Room (Z7B, because Z7 was divided by a bulletproof glass partition), came some of what Newt called ‘handy last-minute advice’.

It turned out to be more of a ‘let’s embarrass everyone on camera to be documented for posterity’ session.

“Entering into relationships with historical figures is strictly frowned upon,” said Raleigh glumly, reading off a card. “Because one person you’re sleeping with secretly might shoot the other, and that really sucks.”

“Listeners, he’s talking about Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton,” giggled Newt.

“I loved Xander, I really did!” Raleigh cried hotly; his blush faded to greyscale again.

Mako and Charlene then entered on either side of Raleigh; dully intoning, “Entering into relationships with other employees is equally frowned upon.”

The camera angle changed drastically, as if Newt was bending over double in an effort to avoid wheezing.

(Hermann noted that Charlene was wearing unsurprisingly lethal-looking stilettos.)

Raleigh sidled out of the frame, leaving the two sixteen-year-olds to awkwardly avoid each other’s eyes. “In case of emergency, oxygen masks will drop – “

“Save it Becket, they’ve never been on a modern airplane, either of them,” Newt gasped with laughter. “The reference…is _flying_ … _over their heads_ …shit.”

The film switched back to color for a ruggedly handsome Australian man to squeeze Charlene’s shoulder with a, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer!”

(“Cut it out, Dad!” shrieked Charlene; Hermann genuinely could not tell whether she was fondly exasperated or just plain old exasperated.)

“Do not sneak out in the middle of the night, and do not get arrested,” advised Charlene next. Once her father left the screen, she leaned into the camera to add with a confidential whisper, “Actually, the wrist devices aren’t monitored, so if you can get someone on base to shadow you, you should be pretty much in the clear.”

“Do not, I repeat, _do not_   try to find your younger self,” Yancy said seriously. “There aren’t any life-altering paradoxes, but if you try to give five-year-old you an ice cream cone, your mother _will_ order a restraining order against you. Take my word for it.”

Hermann let out an embarrassing cross between a groan and a laugh, and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, stopping himself in order to check the corners of the room for bugs and/or surveillance cameras.

“And above all,” began a voice Hermann recognized as Pentecost’s; he automatically jerked his head back towards the screen, “above all, stick to the clock. If you are away for three weeks in real time, arrive here precisely three weeks after the moment you left. _Precisely_.”

“Why, sir, I don’t know why you’d bother mentioning _that_ ,” commented Newt innocently.

“It’s not like I knew a fifteen year old agent once who left for a jaunt and came back the following day looking eighteen, with six doctorates and – “

The camera fell to the floor with a crash, and yet somehow managed to still be running.

Newt’s voice came back garbled, “Oh, you’re still on about that? Let me tell you that it wasn’t a walk in the park, man, it was _hell_ , and I had to avoid like ten different agents you put on my trail, not to mention that _lo_ -ser posh British dude who kept phoning me to try and get me back – all ‘ _Newton’_ like he wanted to spank me – and not in a sexual way or anything – in like the corporal punishment way, and – “

Hermann’s breath caught in his throat; the light in his eyes faded in an instant. If the movie hadn’t ended right there, he was eighty percent sure he would have punched the screen to stop it.

Five minutes later, he groped blindly in the underwear drawer for his phone.

_Dear Ness,_

_I love you, and I don’t know how to explain this, but there is no way out for me. I tried, but…there’s no way. I don’t believe in predestination, but I know for a fact that this is my destiny. One hundred percent certain._

_I promise I’ll see you when I can, because you know me – regulations have never stopped me._

_That was sarcasm, Ness, but really, I’ll see you, even if they don’t let me._

_But please, move on, darling. You have a future to get to, and me? I have the present._

_With love,_

_Hermann._

After pressing ‘send,’ he tossed the phone back in the cabinet without thinking. In retrospect, once in his own room, he hoped that was Raleigh’s underwear drawer, because really, of all horrific first impressions to make on Yancy Becket – who apparently was going to be his partner – “I think I left something in your underwear drawer,” was probably the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, this was supposed to be a filler chapter, and then shit happened - so I'm terribly sorry for the delay. D: 
> 
> If the whole "Hermann baby" thing broke you, it broke me too. It really, really broke me. 
> 
> Anyways, the comments/kudos/etc on ch1 made my week, and if you guys leave more, I'll be so ridiculously happy. And you can visit me on tumblr at patrachilles~


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